Wary of a trick, Patrica moved aside and let her assistant get the package. Opening it carefully, the madam almost dropped the shotgun in shock. Inside was a pre-dark handblaster, a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum in perfect condition, the barrel shining with oil, as smooth as winter ice. Even the cushioned grip was intact, without a single crack or tiny piece missing. Unfamiliar with the blaster, she fumbled a bit before managing to release the cylinder and check the barrel. Perfect. The damn thing might as well be brand-new. She dry fired it a few times to check the spring, the solid sound of the hammer falling music to her ears.
Shutting the cylinder with fingertip pressure, Patrica stared at Harold, standing as if braced for a whipping. He was fully capable of tearing this whole house down to the foundation, and now he stood in fear of her words. Did he know what this actually was, and what it was truly worth?
“And bullets,” Harold hastily added, showing a fistful of cartridges, fearing her lack of response was an indication the blaster wasn’t good enough. It was the best he could find. He was supposed to give it to her father as dowry, but was it enough to buy his wife free from the bed?
Without fear, Patrica walked closer and took the bullets from his trembling palm. “This is forbidden. None but the baron and his men can own blasters.” But the madam took them and tucked them into the fold of her dress. With a blaster like this, a person could risk leaving the ville. Be free of the bastard Machine forever. Anybody could leave the ville, but outside there were many muties and animals who waited for norms to risk crossing the desert. Not many ever came back. A working blaster in this condition could have bought him the whole damn gaudy house for a week. Ten times enough to buy a retarded slut who had to be tied to the bed to keep her from rolling over and offering the wrong end to a customer.
“Enough?” Harold asked, hope burgeoning within. “We go now.”
“No. This doesn’t buy her, boy,” the woman lied with a straight face. “A lovely quiff like Laura can earn more than this each moon for years. The baron himself wants her, and who can risk angering him?”
Choking slightly on her gag, Laura shivered on the bed, and Harold gently reached down to lay a blanket over her partially nude form. She smiled around the rag at him and closed her eyes, drifting off to sleep.
“Buy me a month,” he said, staring at his wife. “A month no kissing?”
Kissing. How sweet, the poor dullard. “No, Harold. Everybody works,” Patrica said, crossing her arms. “No work, no food.” An animal growl started low in the man’s throat, and the madam realized she had gone too far.
“But it will buy you a week off her back, if that’s what you mean,” she hastily corrected, smiling for her life. “She can scrub pots in the kitchen and clean the lavs. Mop the floors.”
Ask for more, screamed the voices in his head. “Two weeks!”
“One,” Patrica said, surprised he would even try to bargain. Mebbe he wasn’t as insane as she had heard. “Plus, I don’t tell the baron you found a blaster…in the ville?”
Harold shrugged noncommittally.
Damn, he wasn’t talking. “However, if you want to marry her, it will cost a lot more than this one poor blaster.” She pressed her thumb against the hammer and pulled the trigger a few times. “See? It’s no good. Broken already.”
The man frowned, contorting his face into a grimace.
“I know longblasters,” he said slowly, testing each word as if they were rotting timbers on a bridge. One wrong move and he would fall to his death. “Bag full.”
“A duffel bag?” Patrica asked, trying not to show her excitement.
A glum nod. “That enough?”
In the hallway, her assistant sharply whistled.
“Yes, dear Harold. That’s enough. Come back in a week with a bag full of working blasters, and Laura is your wife. Working, mind you,” she scolded. “Not junk, like this!”